Jacob Rees-Mogg: use of food banks has risen because people know they exist – video

Charities have reacted angrily after the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the rapid increase in food banks showed a “rather uplifting” picture of a compassionate country.

There are at least 2,000 food banks in the UK giving out emergency food parcels to people in hardship, according to a survey published in May. In 2010, just a handful existed.

Challenged by a caller to a radio phone-in about the rapid rise in food banks, Rees-Mogg argued on Thursday that they fulfilled a vital function. “I don’t think the state can do everything,” he said. “It tries to provide a base of welfare that should allow people to make ends meet during the course of the week, but on some occasions that will not work.

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“And to have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens, I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are.”

Garry Lemon, the head of media and external affairs at the Trussell Trust, Britain’s biggest food bank network, said: “We agree that the work of volunteers and voluntary organisations is uplifting, but food banks are an emergency service and whilst they do all they can to offer support to people in crisis they cannot solve structural problems alone.”

Chris Price, the executive director of Pecan, which runs the Trussell Trust-affiliated Southwark food bank in south London, said: “What he [Rees-Mogg] is saying is that it is great that people are in poverty and that we are here to help them. It is a very unchristian thing to say.”

Rees-Mogg claimed on LBC radio that the real reason for the increased use of food banks was because the previous Labour government had deliberately not told people they existed.

“Food banks pre-date the Conservative government and crucially, the change that took place was that the Conservative government allowed Jobcentre Plus to tell people that food banks existed,” the Conservative backbencher said. “And the former Labour government would not tell them, and that was a policy decision to stop people knowing that there was help available.”

Trussell figures show that, far from triggering a flood of referrals, the decision had little direct effect on food bank activity. In 2016-17, just 5% of referrals to Trussell food banks were from jobcentres, a proportion that has remained virtually unchanged for at least the past three years.

Charities said that year-on-year increases in the volume of charity food given out in the UK over the past decade were driven largely by welfare reforms, benefit delays and sanctions that had left low-income people in financial crisis.

Graeme Robbie, a development worker at Community Food Initiatives North East, in Aberdeen, said: “We know there should be no need for food banks in an affluent country like Britain. With all the generosity we have seen from the public, we also have to accept that food banks are not inevitable. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

Labour said it rejected Rees-Mogg’s argument about the referral policy. Ian Lavery , an MP and the party’s national campaign coordinator, said: “The real reason people are going to food banks in record numbers is because the Tories have slashed public sector jobs and living standards over the last seven years, plunging more families into poverty and homelessness.

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“This kind of comment shows Jacob Rees-Mogg really is the dictionary definition of an out-of-touch Tory.”

Rees-Mogg, the North East Somerset MP who was recently named as the Tory grassroots’ favourite to succeed Theresa May, said last week he opposed same-sex marriage and was against all abortion, including in cases of rape. Asked on LBC radio about moves to make the morning-after pill more easily available to women, Rees-Mogg, a Catholic father of six, said it was “a great sadness”.

During the phone-in, Rees-Mogg also insisted that he had no leadership ambitions. “I have no wish to become leader of the Conservative party. I’m fully supporting Mrs May,” he said. “I am completely backing Mrs May and no one serious thinks that I am a credible candidate.”

Asked what cabinet job he would most like, Rees-Mogg said: “That’s not going to happen.” He said May had been asked in a radio interview if she might place him in the cabinet, and “she laughed for the longest amount of time she has laughed since the general election”.

He added: “I was delighted to bring some happiness and joy to our distinguished prime minister, but that’s how seriously she takes it.”